


Sh'ma Yisra'el

by anythingbutplatonic



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 4x22, Episode Related, F/M, Felicity is Jewish, Hebrew, Jewish!Felicity, Judaism, Lost In The Flood, Missing Scene Fic, Team Arrow, Team Arrow as family, Tean dynamics, episode reaction fic, hurt/comfort ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:59:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7293049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anythingbutplatonic/pseuds/anythingbutplatonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Childhood prayer helps Felicity distract herself as she awaits her team’s return, with Thea, from Teyvat Noah.</p>
<p>Episode reaction/missing scene fic for 4x22 "Lost In The Flood".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sh'ma Yisra'el

Felicity had always known what words she was supposed to speak when her time came.

Her time to die, that is.

It was the same thing that all Jewish kids were taught from the moment they could talk, instructed to speak it when they woke up in the morning and went to bed at night. 

It was what Jews were supposed to recite on their deathbed. 

Granted, Felicity had stopped praying just two months shy of her eighth birthday, when she realized that her dad wasn’t coming back, and no amount of tearful poorly-pronounced Hebrew, however well-intentioned, would change that. 

Even so, she still knew the words, even now. She’d been whispering them to herself over and over since she’d started to hear the fighting and commotion between Oliver (and Diggle) and the rest of HIVE’s soldiers on the other side of the comms at Teyvat Noah. 

_Sh'ma Yisra'eil!_

_Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad._

“Hear, O Israel,” she muttered frantically, bungled Hebrew mixing with the English she knew better - it had been years -  her eyes squeezed tightly shut. The explosions of gunfire in her ear were like earthquakes in the way they seemed to shake her whole being. “The Lord is our God, the Lord is One.”

She was praying for them to succeed. To come back - to come back to her. 

Both of them. 

No, _all_  of them. 

Diggle, Oliver...and Thea. 

God, she hoped Thea was alright. 

_V'ahav'ta eit Adonai Elohekha b'khol l'vav'kha uv'khol naf'sh'kha uv'khol m'odekha._

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

It wasn’t for her. The prayer. It wasn’t morning, or nighttime, and she wasn’t dying. 

It was for _them_.

It was always for _them_.

Her team. 

_Oliver_.

At the thought of his name, Felicity’s heart gave a particularly painful squeeze. She opened her eyes, as if she expected to hear his heavy footfalls on the stairs coming down into the bunker, the familiar creak and groan of leather as he would sink down onto the medical table, waiting for her to assess the damage he’d sustained with an attentive, and insistent, eye. 

But there was only more sounds of fighting. 

_V'hayu had'varim ha'eileh asher anokhi m'tzav'kha hayom al l'vavekha._

_V'shinan'tam l'vanekha v'dibar'ta bam_ _b'shiv't'kha b'veitekha uv'lekh't'kha vaderekh uv'shakh'b'kha uv'kumekha._

_“_ And these words that I command you today shall be in your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children,” -

She shouldn’t have said that.

Because now she was thinking of Oliver again. Of everything that had happened, and everything that now never would.

_Kids_. 

She’d never seen herself as a mothering type. Not really. She was twenty-six and she considered Lucky Charms to be a nutritious breakfast - _if_  she hadn’t woke up late and had only time for a coffee, and had to deal with only sandwiches from the vending machine in the lobby of PT when she got to work.

Now, she didn’t even have that as a backup anymore. 

But children with Oliver....yes, she could see herself having kids with him. A kid with blue eyes and Oliver’s sandy blond hair and signature wonderful smile. Or maybe their child would be dark-haired, like her, and everyone would make jokes about him or her being adopted because both parents had light-coloured hair. 

(She didn’t have to tell anyone that hers wasn’t natural.)

That was not going to happen, now.

No blond or dark-haired babies for them. No being husband and wife. No nothing. 

Only what-ifs. 

A single tear slid down her cheek, and then another and another. Her eyes slammed closed again, her lips trembling. 

No.

She had to be strong. 

Her voice shaking, she continued the words of the prayer, hoping that her meaning would resonate and that her family - her team - would be safe. 

That the man she still so desperately loved would be safe. 

“and you shall speak of them when you sit at home,-”

Her loft - the old loft. Her mother’s apartment. Star City. The bunker. 

“and when you walk along the way-”

Her daily commute to Palmer Tech that was no more. The elevator ride to the bunker from Oliver’s old campaign office. 

“and when you lie down and when you rise up.”

She didn’t do that anymore, but each day she _did_  wake and she had hope. Less at the moment, when Darhk was closing in. But before that, yes, she had had hope. 

There was more to the prayer, she knew, but over the years, only the first part had stuck with her. 

“ _Sh’ma Yisra’eil_ ,” she whispered, brushing away the tears streaking down her face. 

_Hear, O Israel_.

“Please keep my friends safe.”

_And please,_ please _, let Oliver Queen come back to me._


End file.
